Process

Conference Presentations

Are you ready for business agile? Machine learning? Chatbots and intelligent decision support? What about hiring new people and delivering high-quality projects on time and on budget in this new paradigm? Emerging technology and embedded IT teams are entering into a symbiotic relationship, where DevOps is inefficient without AI and business leaders are involved in the everyday of the tech team. In this session, Rachel Burger will discuss how IT leaders can determine which DevOps technologies are hype and which are real. You'll learn how to best leverage new technology to empower your teams while mitigating any new risks. Gain an understanding of what new technologies Rachel believes will be standard practices by 2021 and introduce a business agile paradigm shift that is already happening.

Many teams make the mistake of starting their DevOps journey without a plan. They are excited that there is a way to eliminate pain and increase value in their delivery cycles and value streams, but starting without a plan often relieves pain in one part of the value stream but only causes more pain elsewhere. In this case study-style presentation, Logan Daigle will discuss the methods he has used with a variety of companies to ensure they are thinking about the whole DevOps picture from the beginning. He'll discuss best steps and practices for applying systems thinking to DevOps and give key metrics you can use to measure progress on your own DevOps journey. You will walk away with the ability to put a plan together to better manage your DevOps system complexity and understand how to apply systems thinking to your organization's situation.

DevOps needs to consider many different aspects of software quality to deliver reliable software continuously. The term DevSecOps was developed to highlight that security is a key component of quality and cannot be ignored during continuous delivery. Join Gene Gotimer as he discusses how to determine a definition of done that includes security for DevOps pipelines. He'll discuss how continuous integration can invoke static analysis tools to test for security errors and check for software vulnerabilities. You'll learn how automated deployments and virtualization make dynamic environments available for testing in a production-like setting, and explore approaches to leverage existing regression tests to test for security as a side effect. Gene will reveal how a DevOps pipeline can be designed with security in mind.

Defining, understanding, and agreeing on the scope of work to be done is often an area of discomfort for product managers, business analysts, developers, and quality assurance experts alike. The origin of many items living in our defect tracking systems can be traced to the difficulties encountered while performing these initial requirements activities. Ken Pugh introduces behavior-driven development (BDD), also known as acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), and explains how it works in creating detailed requirements. He outlines the different roles that team members play in the process. BDD/ATDD has proven to dramatically increase productivity and reduce delays in development by decreasing re-work due to requirement misunderstandings.

The number of servers in our systems is constantly increasing. With the move to microservices and continuous deployment practices, deployments frequency is higher than ever, yet we are expected to handle increased demand with the same workforce as before. How can we operate clusters at scale with minimum human involvement? The answer lies in adoption of new practices and tools. Join Viktor Farcic as he discussions how container schedulers are becoming a de facto standard for deploying services at scale and continuous deployment is the new norm for complete automation of software delivery. You'll learn about the problems encountered while building systems that operate at scale and understand how to create a cluster that can be scaled to (almost) any size. Viktor will discuss how to enable self-healing and self-adaptation to build a reliable, fault-tolerant system.

It's important to create a culture that inspires and infuses your development team with great ideas. But ideas are not action. Ideas in and of themselves are nothing more than unrefined, random thoughts, and worse, most ideas never get implemented. Even when you do follow through on some of the best ideas, they can cause great harm without proper planning and execution. While creativity is an asset, unbridled creativity where disparate ideas abound outside a sound decision-making and execution framework will create distraction and chaos. In this session, Melissa Petak will show you how to transform your organization into a value-creating machine. Using Forbes 15 elements of spurring innovation, Melissa will show you how to balance your innovation portfolio, establish a competitive advantage, and drive business engagement. You'll learn how to create a corporate culture that turns ideas into innovation.

It is generally accepted that you should always use proper version control when developing software. Why wouldn't you do the same with your database changes? It's even more important as part of a DevOps continuous integration strategy. Evolving your database schema using SQL scripts seems easy at the start but quickly becomes a nightmare as your application grows more complex. How do you track which scripts have been run? How do you rollback changes? Can you conditionally run certain changes for different environments? In this session Blaine Carter will discuss using a schema migration tool called Liquibase, a database-independent, open source tool for managing database changes. Blaine will demonstrate some of the major features and functionality of Liquibase, including how to extract your current schema into Liquibase, make changes, and roll them back.

The effectiveness of agile approaches are built on influence rather than authority. Practices like collocation and stand-ups actually amplify influence, leveraging behavior patterns built into humans through biology and social conditions. In this workshop, Bernie Maloney will show you how to unpack some fundamental influence patterns, gleaned from typical collaboration ceremonies, and turn them into conscious tools for leadership. Through interactive exercises, you’ll amplify and practice your ability to influence by quickly establishing and building rapport via all forms of active communication: words, inflection, and body language. Bernie will then show you how to extend these tools to lead individuals and teams, and influence upward in your organization as well. You will take away a set of simple yet subtle techniques to improve your communication effectiveness.

Customers are demanding faster delivery of software products. Unfortunately, many organizations have not figured out how to automate their delivery process so they can deploy software applications on demand. In this session, Shivakumar Gopalakrishnan will discuss how Varian Medical Systems uses DevOps capabilities, AI, and chatbots to improve the operational aspects of its 360 Oncology care management platform and enable innovation by shortening time to market. As with any DevOps infrastructure for cloud-native applications, 360 Oncology's infrastructure is complex and has multiple streaming sources of information. You'll learn how bleeding-edge technologies and tools are leveraged to enable the DevOps team to make more informed decisions quickly.

Organizations today are required to test their web application across browsers and mobile devices. Choosing the right framework is a matter of organizational as well as technical fit. With a plethora of test frameworks that span across practices such as behavior-driven development, unit tests, UI, and others, it can be a struggle to select the right tool. In this session, Eran Kinsbruner will provide an overview of the market and cover the top ten open source test frameworks, with a comparison table of pros and cons about when and why to use one tool over another. Eran will take into account technical automation skills, market trends, framework functionality, usability, and integration concerns. You'll learn about the current cross-browser testing landscape and future forecasts, putting you in a solid position to pick the best open source test framework for your unique needs.

Read the new eGuide from TechWell offering some of the most popular articles from experts in the field laid out in a comphrensive, 21-page guide. Explore the advice, tips, and philosophy on advancing your agile team wether you're new to agile or looking to improve upon your team's agile approaches. Learn the role of an agile coach, the agile mindset, a test manager's place in agile, and more. Download here.